Any way you slice it, food part of everyday language

Monday

Jan 28, 2008 at 12:01 AMJan 28, 2008 at 5:21 PM

Has something been eating at you lately? Maybe it’s your own words. Whether talking about work, money, people, or a variety of everyday situations, we have a smorgasbord of food-related allusions we can cook up to describe it.

Stacie Lewis

Has something been eating at you lately? Maybe it’s your own words.

Whether talking about work, money, people, or a variety of everyday situations, we have a smorgasbord of food-related allusions we can cook up to describe it.

Maybe you think that’s a bunch of bologna. Wake up and smell the coffee. It’s not such a half-baked idea. If you were grilled on the subject, you may eventually agree.

Since this type of topic can leave your head scrambled, let’s see if we can separate the wheat from the chaff.

Allan Metcalf, an English professor at MacMurray College in Jacksonville and author of several books on words including “How We Talk: American Regional English Today” (Houghton Mifflin, 2000), says people talk about what they’re familiar with and concerned about.

“Food is something we’re all concerned about,” he says. “It’s not surprising that food metaphors come up in our language so often.”

We use the allusions to make flavorful references to people. They come in a variety of food forms.

Some people are fruitcakes and some are nut cases. We know people who don’t get along well and mix like vinegar and oil.

Some people are real hot dogs. You know, the kind that can really ham it up.

Meanwhile, a few people tell jokes that fall flat as a pancake.

Some people are the cream of the crop. They always seem to get all the gravy. But, hey, that’s the way the cookie crumbles.

We also use food to allude to things that we do. But let’s put that one on the back burner for right now. We can hash it out later.

We also allude to food to describe certain situations.

A pickle is a place in which you usually don’t want to find yourself. Or worse, a jam. If between both, then you’re sandwiched.

If you’ve ever reached the boiling point, you know that trouble is brewing. Of course, you can sit and stew on it for a while if you want, because if you act rashly, you may find yourself jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.

You seem to be waffling on the idea that food is peppered throughout our language, but let’s get to the meat of the matter and you may eventually agree. Otherwise, you could end up with egg on your face.

But, perhaps you’re the type that likes things a little more sugarcoated. That’s fine. We can spice it up a little. It will be a piece of cake.

Maybe we’re milking the idea here, but let’s run it through the oven one more time to see how it pans out.

Perhaps using food references to describe people and situations is not your cup of tea. We may be comparing apples and oranges, so let’s add a dash of work and a spoonful of money to help you drink this in.

Not only do we all need some dough, we also want a piece of the pie. We have to bring home the bacon. Many of us are on the low end of the food chain in this dog-eat-dog world, so it’s usually the well-seasoned worker who knows on which side his bread is buttered.

Even if we are the breadwinners of the family, we’re eventually asked to fork it over somehow, somewhere.

Any way you slice it, food comes into our everyday language. Of course, it could be that you should take all this with a grain of salt because it is just a mess of pottage anyway.

While we could go on and on with this, you do have that lean and hungry look about you, so let’s not create a feeding frenzy and end up eating the seed corn. We need to leave some food for thought for another time.